The 2022 Snooker Masters came to its second matchday, with Chinese teenager Zhao Xintong taking on "The Wizard" John Higgins, and defending champion Yan Bingtao in the earlier opener who lost to Mark Williams.
With Yan Bingtao's first round out, the Chinese team of this Masters tournament is only Zhao Xintong, and for Zhao Xintong, who has just won the first three major championships, his self-confidence and momentum are at the peak, and I believe that this game will also do his best.
And John Higgins as one of the best players is certainly not so easy to deal with, not to mention that Zhao Xintong won the championship by reversing Higgins after breaking into the final after reversing Higgins, and for Higgins, this Masters tournament is also a battle of revenge.
At the beginning of the game, Higgins returned the ball and missed the bench opportunity, Zhao Xintong scored red and blue balls consecutively through accuracy, but then there was a mistake, Higgins began to score around the black ball, and did not give Zhao Xintong the opportunity to play again to blast the first shot of the game to get a start.
Back in the second set, Zhao Xintong did not reduce his desire to attack because of the loss in the previous set, and still soared into a difficult long red ball after missing the opportunity, and returned a large over 100 to complete the clearance to equalize.
The next two innings of experienced Higgins began to look for opportunities through his excellent defense, first forcing Zhao Xintong to make mistakes in succession to counter the score twice, and then in one set Zhao Xintong could not find the mobile phone meeting under Higgins' airtight defense, Higgins was a zero-knock to complete the super score, Zhao Xintong came to the stage to try snooker and entered the intermission at 1:3 without success.
After the break, Zhao Xintong did not adjust back to the bad feel in time, although relying on preparing to fight the long stage, but he made a mistake on the next simple ball, Higgins laughed and threw out his second shot of the game to lead 4:1.
In the sixth game, Zhao Xintong hit the red ball in the bag after starting to have problems again, Higgins got the opportunity to start playing unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and there was a mistake in the pole, Zhao Xintong's second hand was difficult to complete the super score to chase the score to 2:4.
Then in the first round, both of them began to compete in defense, but in this regard, Higgins was obviously better, and Zhao Xintong, who could not have the upper hand on the defensive end, could only fight helplessly, but there was no consecutive mistakes in accuracy, and Higgins repeatedly started to solve the situation to achieve a super score of 5:2 to reach the match point first.
In the last set, Zhao Xintong still failed to gain the upper hand on the defensive end, while Higgins was more and more courageous, and as Zhao Xintong missed the ball in defense, the game also lost suspense, and Higgins advanced strongly with a 6:2 victory.
Looking at the state of Higgins in the first half of the game, it can be said that there is no solution, although the physical strength of the second half is declining, but Zhao Xintong is also not good, and finally strong revenge on the quarterfinals will mark Williams.
And Zhao Xintong can be described as a grief-stricken and humiliated battle, and thought that he could continue the state of winning the British Championship to impact the championship of this Masters, but the bad feat was still helpless to join hands with Yan Bingtao to suffer a round of travel.
In this way, the Chinese snooker legion has been completely destroyed in this Masters, and I hope that Yan Bingtao and Zhao Xintong will not be affected by this defeat, and then work hard to train and prepare for the next event, and strive for good results in subsequent events.